Doc Chat Forty-Five: A Guide to Black Travel Guides

By Julie Golia, Associate Director, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books and Charles J. Liebman Curator of Manuscripts
March 7, 2022
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

On February 24, 2022, Doc Chat looked inside the pages of the Library's remarkable collection of African American travel guides.

Go, Guide to Pleasant Motoring, Vol 4

Go, guide to pleasant motoring, Vol. 4, 1955; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58020229.

weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty-Five, Schomburg Center librarian Rhonda Evans and NYPL curator Julie Golia analyzed travel guides used by African Americans to help them navigate the experience of travel during the early and mid 20th century, when racially discriminatory laws were widespread. Evans and Golia discussed the many different kinds of travel guides, who published them, and how they shaped a growing economy of tourism for Black Americans.

Doc Chat Episode 45: A Guide to Black Travel Guides from The New York Public Library on Vimeo.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Forty-Five: Primary Sources

Afro American travel map

Afro American travel map, 1942; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58160685.

Rhonda and Julie explored selections for several different travel guides housed in the Schomburg Center's Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division. All are digitized and available on NYPL Digital Collections. 

The TravelGuide Collection

The Go, Guide to Pleasant Motoring Collection

The Green Book Collection

Hackley & Harrison's hotel and apartment guide for colored travelers

The travelers guide: hotels, apartments, rooms, meals, garage accommodations, etc. for colored travelers

N.H.A. Directory and Guide to Travelers

Episode Forty-Five: Readings and Resources

The staff in the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division at the Schomburg Center have created this thorough guide to locating and researching Black travel guides in the collection. The research guide includes a bibliography of books, journals, theses, and other resources. 

Join the Doc Chat Conversation

Doc Chat episodes take place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM. Check out upcoming episodes on NYPL's calendar,  and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the Doc Chat Channel of NYPL's blog shortly after the program. There you can also explore videos and resources for past episodes. See you at the next Doc Chat!